Returnal celebrates 4th anniversary with surprise PS5 Pro patch

Returnal is an excellent and heart-pumping 3rd-person bullet hell rogue-like from the team at Housemarque. Released back in 2021 shortly following the PS5’s launch, the title saw solid support from the studio. 3 years on from its last major update (and two years since the PC release), Returnal has gotten a small yet welcome patch bringing full PS5 Pro support.

In celebration of the game’s 4th anniversary, Housemarque announced and released a surprise PlayStation 5 Pro patch – said to bring “up to 2.5X the pixels on PS5 Pro for a higher resolution experience of Returnal.”

While certainly a welcome upgrade, what you see is what you get with this Pro patch. As analysed by Digital Foundry, this update solely offers a boost to resolution, bringing it up from a native 1080p (temporally reconstructed to 1440p then upscaled to 4K) to a dynamic 1728-1350p. All in all, a solid enhancement.

Interestingly, Housemarque seemingly decided against PlayStation’s PSSR. Similarly, none of the ray-tracing effects added with the PC port have been brought over.

Still, a 2.5x resolution boost is certainly noticeable, making a fast-paced game like Returnal more easily appreciable – especially with how many particles the game throws at the screen at any given moment.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of the Pro patch? Do you notice a difference? Are you underwhelmed by the enhancements? Let us know down below.

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